If You Go Out In The Woods Today
by TheBoneyKingOfNowhere
Summary: While taking a stroll down memory-lane, Daryl encounters three women who affected and changed his life…
1. Scarlett

**Author's notes**

Disclaimer: The universe and the canon characters are the propriety of _The Walking Dead_'s creators.

This short story is a translation of a fanfiction (three chapters, completed) I wrote myself in French a few months ago (it was called _Promenons-nous dans les bois_). Please, keep in mind that the original version was written in early October 2012, before some revelations about Daryl's past. So (I know) there is one major inconstancy with the show, and that makes my story slightly AU. I hope it won't be too much of a turn-off for you…  
Also, if something doesn't seem clear (especially the "present" events), don't worry, it will become clearer with chapters 2 and 3.

This is the first time I write fiction in English. I think you will "feel" it in the sentences structures... So if you have any advice to help me to improve my writing skills in English, please don't hesitate to tell me so in your reviews or in a PM. It would be so helpful!

Finally, I want to thank several people.

First of all, my dear beta-readers.  
**Praxid**, who did a wonderful job editing this fanfiction; who gave me so many good advices to improve this translation. She was such a great help!  
**QueensGambit**, who was the second set of eyes for editing and improving this fic.  
Thank you so much, the both of you! I wouldn't have been able to publish this, if not for your hard work.

I would also like to thank **BeingLolaStar**, who found the title for this translation. Her knowledge of nursery rhymes was very helpful!

And last, but not least, a big thank you to **Eponyme Anonyme**, who encouraged me through the whole translating process,who agreed - since she knew the original French version so well - to give me her opinion about this English version, and who introduced me to Praxid.

I'll cut the rambling here, and leave you to your reading. Please, enjoy!

* * *

If you go out in the woods today

1. Scarlett

_"Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean ... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom." _

Oscar Wilde, _Salomé_.

* * *

He's feeling the pain slowly, progressively overwhelming him. It radiates from his right upper thigh, like some successive waves whose the on-going, swirling surfs make his skin tremble, his muscles flinch, until his whole body is dashed by slight spasms; a sea stirred to wildness by the rage of a gaping wound from which the blood is now flowing freely. Daryl is feeling the pain and he is trying to nurse himself, nursing the hope to heal his gash. With a wavering hand, shipwrecked in that ocean of crimson purple, he tries to hold back the warm and thick gush from leaking out more; the hand drowns, reddened, confused like a new-born bathed in blood. Daryl thinks - even as a child he knew – that he is born a murderer. With the first imperious stare from his father, he was convicted for the murder of a mother he would never know. His sentence was a daily retribution, an everyday torment he would always suffer without breathing a word, without flinching. He would learn not to cry any more, not to wince any more, not to hurt any more, not to feel any more – nothing - because those blows, those insults, those slamming doors, those taunts, those belts whipping his back, those blades entering his skin, those fists meeting his face, this perpetual belittlement, his childhood's bleak nursery rhymes – _you're a failure, a loser, a pussy, a faggot_ – and those expressions full of anger and contempt, he deserved them, a fair punishment to atone, maybe one day, in the end of a life, for the terrible sin of his birth.

Daryl pushes off the walker lying on the top of him, a bit. It's dead for good, a hunting knife stuck down, to the hilt, in its eye. While expiring its last breath, the zombie has exhaled a fetid odour - maintained by its decaying, decomposing flesh - exactly toward Daryl's face - twisted by pain. The scent hits him full-on, permeating his wrinkled nostrils - creased with disgust; his throat frenetically working to repress the heaves, too late. His paltry meal, more liquid than solid really - partially digested only – ends up spread out on the grass, blending with the mud, the blood and the pieces of putrid skin here and there. Daryl closes his eyes just one moment, squeezing his eyelids tightly, with all his strength. Let it all go away, fade out - all that pain, unbearable now. But he doesn't cry - he can't - he didn't learn how. No, he'd forgotten how, and there is no time to learn again now. But he's forgotten how to feel, as well, so let it all go away – disappear. He closes his eyes again, squeezes his eyelids harder - with all the small strength he still has left. But it isn't enough, the pain stays, firmly settled there, and the shame too. That bitter shame he had felt, many years ago, when he vomited, at the edge of the football field, under the neighbourhood kid's sniggers and jibes - and Scarlett's.

Scarlett… Scarlett and her long curls - dark and silky. Scarlett and her big, gorgeous, brown eyes that always seemed surprised. Even as an eight-years-old, she was already made to break hearts. Daryl's wouldn't be any exception. Of course, the young Daryl fell in love with her – right along with every other boy in his class. He fell in love with her bright smile, with those lovely little dimples that hollowed her pink cheeks. With her crystalline laugh, so beautiful, so pure that it was impossible to identify it as mocking, haughty, condescending. With her locks, always adorned with fuchsia ribbons, bedecked with little pastel barrettes shaped like dragonflies - like butterflies. And so she looked like a forest fairy, a nymph like the ones in the tales Miss Ruby told at kindergarten. The illustrations in those children books seemed like they'd fallen out of one of his fabulous fantasy. Those mythical creatures would always come to help Daryl when he dreamed. They would take him away into the dreamscapes, where he would hope to lose himself forever. But the nightmares would catch him every time, and he would end up losing himself in dark, dismal, disturbing mazes - praying the monsters wouldn't find him. Praying a divine force would seize him. Praying wings would grow on him so he could fly and fly away from all of it…

Most of all, Daryl fell in love with Scarlett's big doe eyes, eyes that made him want to track her, to hunt her, to tame her too. He hadn't understood yet who was the predator and who was the prey. Only a few scattered, diffuse, blurry recollections remain now from that time - as if a misty veil covers the memory's scope. A veil that sometimes clears away for a moment, then darkens again. Now, all that remains of that first love – firmly anchored - branded with red-hot iron in his mind, is the lesson it taught him. Engraved within him - like he engraved their two names, surrounded them with a clumsily drawn heart. Separating them by a small "plus" sign that would unite them forever - sheltered in that heart's reassuring cocoon. Resting on the bark of a big oak with russet leaves. _Quercus virginiana_, it was called - Daryl read that in a botanical reference book. One with a green cover and purplish letters, copiously illustrated, that he loved reading for hours and hours. Because, some day, when he grew up, he would be a botanist. He would know everything about plants and trees. One day, he had proudly announced it to his father - who hadn't been proud at all. _Bota-what? You think you're better than us, you little shit, and what's up with that talking, saying words you don't understand just to show off! _And he had laughed with that mocking, raucous laugh that had hurt Daryl so deeply; he couldn't be a botanist. And so "Daryl+Scarlett", their names tied, protected by that symbolic heart, on that centenarian tree didn't tie them forever. And now, lying there beside the walker, next to the puke and blood and soiled dirt, Daryl finds himself wondering if that craving relic still exists, any more…

Another episode from that long gone time comes back to him. In class, he managed to sit down just behind her, so he could stare endlessly into the brown, tawny cascade of her hair, where those rosy insects flitted, letting themselves being submerged by a wayward strand of hair, only to re-emerge later when Scarlett coquettishly tidied her hairstyle up. And Daryl always let himself be engulfed by the show playing out in front of him. He was picturing himself with his goddess in the autumnal looking, swampy woods. And she would stare at him with her brown irises and he would take her home, as proud as his big brother Merle when he brought a magnificent deer from a hunting trip, the previous Sunday. That had made Daryl admiring, and a little bit envious, but, most importantly, it fed the two brothers while their father was missing - along with the housekeeping money. Gone God only knows where and for how long. And Daryl was stargazing the back of Scarlett's head, absent minded, dazed by the beauty of those airy curls. He wanted to bury his face in them, and he found his mind escaping into fantasy worlds that belonged only to him - and into which he invited Scarlett for an enchanting journey. The teacher's voice was always so far away, like a monotonous whisper. And that only made his inner world more realistic. The teacher's long-winded lecture would become the humming of insects in Daryl's magical forest. _Distracted, has his head in the clouds, unable to focus on anything, lazy, doesn't work at school_ - the symptoms were regularly revealed to progressively be diagnosed as an incurable disease, stupidity mixed with a deplorable social environment. After numerous examinations, year after year, the physicians-teachers were often fatalistic, resigned – only sometimes hopeful, ready to try any ultimate, unprecedented treatment. All of them around the sick child's desk, they had determined Daryl's fate.

But, God, how Daryl had loved that girl. He even had resolved to seek advice from his older brother - whose knowledge on the subject seemed peerless and who, surprisingly enough, had taken his youngest brother's request very seriously. Merle wasn't the kind of man who liked long speeches, useless he thought. Observation and practicality were, according to him, the only possible teachers. Now, Daryl especially remembers his first impressions, the plumes of smoke that gave the seedy bar an atmosphere slightly phantasmagorical; the men with glassy, streaked with busted veins, eyes, with yellowish fingertips, with a breath full of beer or whisky; the women wearing too much make-up, their lip-stick dripping, their rouge too red, and their eyelids too dark, trying to entice the men with a few provocative flutters of lashes. With their too-small clothes, their too-high heels, on which they seemed to waver. Some of them were dancing on a podium, stripping themselves slowly from their clothing, making their hips slither like long snakes wearing scarlet lace - reeking fire and brimstone - revealing their slightly withered breasts and their slightly flabby stomachs, covered by the clamour of a male crowd gathered around them. Merle had led him to the bar, ordered an amber coloured whisky and had commanded him to observe. And Daryl observed, and listened, to the brief, vulgar conversation between his big brother and a woman tightly wrapped in a claret jean mini-short. That conversation quickly ended up in a kiss - Merle's hands touching and feeling and rubbing every square centimetre of his one night stand's flesh. He dragged her toward a door at back of the room, probably leading to the toilets, prompting Daryl to remain there and to order himself a drink.

And when Daryl, armed with his bravery and his brother's advices, resolved himself to unveil his feelings to Scarlett; she laughed at him. He still remembers the short, derisive burst of laughter and the contemptuous expression disfiguring her pretty features. In that one moment - in the space of a few infinitesimal seconds - she became ugly, like a demonic spirit that took on a pleasing shape to tempt mere mortals, and revealed inadvertently its true face. How Daryl, that redneck kid, that scrawny little boy – shrimp was Merle's nickname for him then – wearing a hundred-times-patched-up, too-large jacket, could have imagined that she, Scarlett, living in one of these beautiful and spacious houses on the top of the hill overhanging the town – and she even must have a swimming pool in her garden, thought Daryl, and a playroom, with a trampoline perhaps – could even consider liking him? He couldn't possibly think she would take his hand - a hand he probably hadn't wash in at least three days, that must have been covered by all kinds of germs mommy and daddy had warned her about – could he? How could he have kept up such a delusion? Anyway, her parents would never agree for them to play together. They weren't from the same world, and that was it! And it was so funny, so laughable, really!

And, Daryl had taken a stroll into the woods, with his broken heart. The woods was his refuge, his sanctuary, and he got lost and he had roamed about, hours and hours, days and days, and it had been far from the fairy tales' initiatory journey. There were no ogre, no gingerbread house, no Little Red Riding Hood, no wolves, no wizards, no brown-haired and doe-eyed nymph either. Nothing. Then, after having at last found his path outside the labyrinth of trees and bushes, after having come home, after having rested, after his father had come back too from his own ethylic winding labyrinth, he came down with the flu. His father nagged at him - _Dixons aren't pussies and they don't get sick_; not that Daryl had wanted to stay at home with his company anyway. So, in spite of the nausea, the fatigue, the headache, the fever, he walked the path to school. The day passed in slow motion, his hazy mind barely awake, sometimes it was full of cotton, and he would sink into it; would struggle to move forward. Sometimes there was a giant anvil hammering at his temples, and making them resonate. And, leaving school, passing by the football field, surrounded by all his classmates, he had been overcome by an atrocious nausea that he tried in vain to contain. But it was no use, and in a repugnant squelching sound, he puked up the contents of his lunch, red-faced with the shame of being seen like that by such a large assembly. Scarlett was there of course, she who had so cruelly rejected him a few days before. She was the first to laugh, the first to hurl some disparaging and mocking comment, and the others had followed the lead, increasing Daryl's embarrassment. Scarlett was the first to break Daryl's heart and the young boy swore to himself she would be the last. Never again he would let himself to be so vulnerable, never again he would open his heart to anyone; he wouldn't lay it at a girl's feet again, senselessly waiting for her to stomp on it like Scarlett did. He would be stronger from now on. And Daryl kept his word.


	2. Lily

Once again, many thanks to QueensGambit for checking and editing this chapter.

All my thanks for the reviews, the favorites and the alert.

And here is the second chapter. Enjoy!

* * *

If you go out in the woods today

2. Lily

_"Sur l'onde calme et noire où dorment les étoiles_  
_La blanche Ophélia flotte comme un grand lys,_  
_Flotte très lentement, couchée en ses longs voiles..._  
_- On entend dans les bois lointains des hallalis."_

Arthur Rimbaud, _Ophélie_. (*)

* * *

Daryl turns his head a bit, as to chase away the taunting bad memories. He doesn't need this, not now, not ever. They need to stay repressed in the inner most depths of his unconscious, locked up and immured by the high wall he erected with patience, care and meticulousness. The same wall he has around his heart; his ribs, so many solid bars of a robust and protective cage girdling his chest. But now subsiding with the truly dead brained walker's weight, subsiding and - far from protecting him like before - currently crushing his heart, grinding it, stabbing it with a thousand arrows. But moving his head was a bad idea; a wave of nausea overwhelms him again. He resists this time though, nothing more to vomit anyway. And a huge shiver travels through him, flooring him, even more than his bloodied thigh, which seems almost insensitive now, just as if asleep, almost gone, or a little bit dead maybe. His left cheek lying on the moist grass, Daryl vaguely glimpses numerous legs; certainly running toward him, but they seem - to his foggy and cloudy brain - to slowly leap, nearly weightless; like on the trampoline he imagined Scarlett has had in her vast villa looking down to the working-class area from the classy uptown neighbourhood on the hill. And he hears the rumble, his companions in misery's indistinct cries - however clearly distraught - through the dense fog blocking off his eardrums, worming itself in his head, weakening his senses, his perception. But reviving - with a brutal and perverse irony - ancient memories; paradoxically giving them back their bygone lustre, the clearness of their dawn, their precision, down to their last detail, which seemed - a few moments before - to be forgotten, lost forever.

And it's with a numb mind, blanketed in a thick white cloud, that the puffed up face, that the constantly bloodshot, bulging - but so kind – eyes, that the eternal short sleeves cream-coloured shirt - damp with sweat - that the heavy cotton pants, pulled up to the waist, tighten up by a used up, dark brown, thin, leather belt, that Mister Albin's black moccasins, bubble up very clearly to the surface of Daryl's memories. High-level intellectual, with the promise of brilliant academic career, of a prestigious chair, Mister Albin ended up - Daryl never knew by which hazard - in a wretched high school in the depths of Georgia, where he held down the job of an English teacher. However, he didn't really seem like a man who had made a failure of his life. Even seemed at every minute to be precisely where he wanted to be; as if his existence was absolutely fulfilling, despite his stormy divorce a few years before, despite his son who doggedly refused to see him, despite his tiresome, unrewarding, crusading job that was his own when - every day, invariably - he would find himself in front of a boisterous teenagers' class, not interested in the slightest by literature, preferring to spend their time ragging, chatting, scribbling, sending some small notes to one another under the ever magnanimous eye of that brave Mister Albin, who had seen a few things in his days, no doubt.

And that brave Mister Albin, for a reason or another – did he read in the young man's everlasting absent air something else than mere stupidity or did he just like to bring back to the flock the stray sheep? - became fond of Daryl, who never showed any particular tendency toward his course. Mister Albin always had a compliment for any of his students. The smallest effort was crowned with laurels, conducing them to always earn more of them. Even the erroneous answers were applauded, qualified as interesting, for lack of being correct - but wasn't the truth a moving, fluctuating with ages and societies, concept, what was false today could very well not be so tomorrow, so yes, interesting, very interesting. And he would throw himself in endless digressions, open parenthesis that would never be closed up; deeply boring, in the first time, the teenagers' class. But progressively, as months went by, without Mister Albin ever raising his bonhomie's voice; they started to lend an ear to those long speeches, slowly captivated by their professor's encyclopaedic knowledge, soon listening to him carefully, religiously almost. And without anyone noticing, the tumult, the uproar in the classroom had ceased, replaced by a sincere, mutual respect, an admiration from pupil to master, to be left tacit.

The following year, Mister Albin re-assumed his position and Daryl, to his own surprise, was almost impatient to see him again. And he was looking forward, without really daring to admit it to himself, to hear again his long lectures, to follow the discursive back roads in which his English teacher would so gladly lose himself. And he often ended up confessing in a laugh not knowing any longer what his point had been; but sometimes wasn't the journey more appealing than the destination? And in the middle of September, Mister Albin asked to talk to a nervous and anxious Daryl – what had he done this time? - at the end of the lesson. He then very insistently proposed him, deploying such convincing arguments that Daryl hadn't been able to resist them, to participate in the school play supervised by the professor. The casting already took place the day before, the actors' troupe was already full and no one asked him to be on stage and to perform in front of an audience, so no worries about that. But the stage director, a senior year student, which Daryl only knew by sight, needed to have an assistant in order to put forth a second opinion, to assist him and to help him in his weighty and full of responsibilities task. And Mister Albin brought the discussion to a close by - ultimate argument - shoving in the hands of his stunned student, who didn't seem to connect his teacher's words to their meaning yet, a crumbling book, with a yellowed edge, and whose cover very plainly spelled its contents: Euripides' Tragedies.

That was how Daryl met Lily. He has seen her before, of course; but her face - nor beautiful nor ugly, in one word banal - hadn't anything to strike the minds. Her whole figure was extremely classical; her hair only was clashing, since its blonde shade was so light, almost white. It was however that ordinary girl, of Daryl's age, one grade above him, who had obtained the play's eponymous role, Iphigenia; and with whom he was going to regularly mix; and whom he was going to see subtly transfigure - in her antique costume - into a regal tragedian. They socialised with each other out of necessity, having to talk to each other in framework of a shared project, though they _a priori_ didn't have anything in common, unless maybe a certain dose of reserve. Behind the scenes at least in Lily's case, because on the boards she became alive, stepped out of herself to personify her character with force and conviction. Her usually faltering voice carried far away, so far it began to create an echo inside of Daryl, and it resonated inside him long after they had parted, each of them gone back to their respective family, only to see each other again a few days later. Yes, Lily's voice carried far and long, up to the boy's sweaty sheets. She wanted to be an artist, had she confessed to him during a trifling conversation, about school, classes they liked the best, teachers they hated, at the end of a rehearsal. While they came out of the auditorium and they walked under a street lamp, whose light gave to the young girl's hair a surreal radiance, an angelic aura surrounding her Greek alabaster statue's face. And, without even thinking about it, Daryl leant toward her and kissed her, innocently, briefly, lips closed. Then she smiled at him, a bright smile only directed to him. Maybe her pale cheeks had blushed, Daryl doesn't remember any more…

At the turn of a hallway, a few weeks later, she appeared to him, in her waist belted, light coloured wool coat. Her arms were full of books she was about to drop in her locker, a few feet away. And they hadn't yet repeated that first kiss. But she had since sent insistent looks his way at every rehearsal, had managed to be in his company as much as possible without making her behaviour too transparent - she believed - but she was transparent. And all that put Daryl extremely ill at ease. Himself had found his uneasiness incongruous, because he wasn't an innocent little boy any more. His brother had made sure of it and had taken at heart his formation, regularly taking him, since the beginning of his adolescence, to that bar he once caught a glimpse of when he was still a child. But this time Merle wasn't satisfied to let his younger brother observe; he had quickly pushed him to practise. And it had been under his approving eye and his exceedingly detailed comments, that Daryl had refined his education, perfected his technique, in the arms of numerous nameless, ageless, faceless women. And in the hallway brouhaha, ceaselessly jostled by other students who were heading to their next classroom; Lily slid the unstable and shaky pile of books down her left arm. And, as if to touch him, she reached with her other one toward him, toward his embarrassed hand, that foolishly hung by his side, and that he tried to drive back to his mouth to chew a fingernail and to put up a cool front. But a contrite student chose that very moment to bump into Lily's back with his well full backpack; and - losing its precarious equilibrium - the pile of books tumbled down. By reflex, Daryl knelt down to help her to collect her books strewn on the floor. A sketchbook had been opened, and the page against the uncouth and soulless hallway's tiling was covered by a draft of Daryl's face, who promptly closed the book, feigning having only caught a sight of some random still life. Not that his impassive mask had been necessary, in her fuss, completely focused on her task, Lily hadn't notice anything. She proposed him, almost in a murmur, in a barely audible whisper, that he wouldn't have heard in the pandemonium around them if their heads hadn't been so close, to come to her house next Saturday, during the afternoon, her parents wouldn't be there, in order to rehearse for the play. Daryl nodded. The books were gathered. Lily disappeared from his sight. And, at last, Daryl asked himself what they were going to rehearse. He wasn't an actor; they didn't have any scene together. So rehearsal for what?

It was the first time he stepped in a girl's bedroom. The first time he penetrated a vestal's sacred temple, which terrorised him for the rest of the week; feeling by anticipation revulsion for the baby pink walls; nauseated by the idea of the twee plush bears which would - without a doubt - cover up the linen embroidered with flowery patterns of the bed, the baubles and the gewgaws on the chest of drawers, with a mirror - maybe shaped as an heart - hung above it, and the posters of the last boys-band in fashion. But what he didn't expect was the spartan atmosphere of the room. The white walls, the white wrought iron bed, the white immaculate sheets, the white wood night-stand, the small, white desk under the window, the massive white dresser. The only ornamentation was the reproduction of an art work, pinned on the wall beside the door. It was the reproduction of a bas-relief, portraying, in its centre, a nude woman, languid, slightly muscled, with features of an austere beauty, crowned with foliage or berries - it was difficult to tell for sure. Her long, svelte body partially lay down; as if slouched against an indistinguishable drape support, floating on the wave. Her left arm was put around a majestic stag's neck, who was, like her, the central figure of the art work, and whose immense antler largely stuck out of the top of the sculpture. Around them, giving to the whole picture a sylvan ambiance, were portrayed game dogs, deer and wild boars, whose animalism contrasted with the feminine figure's sensuality. Daryl had to stare at the piece of art for a long moment because - perhaps perceiving his interest - Lily explained to him it was the _Nymphe de Fontainebleau_. The stag was the emblem of a French king, whose name was immediately forgotten by Daryl. And that woman embracing him was a nymph offering herself to him; or maybe was she Diana, goddess of the hunt, a royal sport focusing mainly on two kinds of royal game, the deer and the wild boar. She kept her passionate monologue on the bas-relief's symbolic going, but Daryl was hearing her without listening, hypnotised by that reproduction he was going to have the leisure to admire several times, during his numerous visits at Lily's.

When Daryl opens his eyelids again, weighted by the inertia taking him over, drowsed by the torpor in which his body seems to have dived; his retina laboriously focuses on a dirty and muddy set of boots, with unpaired shoelaces, a few inches from his head. His eyes are closing again on their own, moved by their own will; his brain no longer in control, it surrendered. And his inefficient efforts don't have any repercussion on it. Behind his closed eyelids, he sees again that bas-relief he loved so much he described it in an essay for Mister Albin, who fondly and warmly gazed at him when he congratulated him for the good grade he had had. A few evenings later, during a rehearsal for the end of the term play, Daryl was setting up one of the panels for the scenery, happy to finally be active, after all that time he spent playing the role of a passive observer, not understanding exactly what he was doing there, except pleasing Mister Albin and honouring his word - because he had so stupidly agreed to be the stage director's assistant, without even knowing what precisely was a stage director. And the latter had soon perceived the extend of Daryl's ignorance, and had just as soon stopped to request his assistance, or even to ask for his opinion; but the small student drama group understood very well the only help Daryl would provide was lying in his strong arms, his muscled legs and his robust shoulders. So when the time came to set the scenery up, it was very naturally that all the eyes turned towards him. And while he was lifting the wood panel with outstretched arms, Mister Albin came by, holding in his hands a page of A4 format, glazed paper on which was printed _La Nymphe de Fontainebleau_. Daryl put down the piece of décor, took the gift wordlessly handed by his teacher and he went to carefully slip it in his backpack in the backstage.

On the stool, under which was resting Daryl's pack, was sitting Lily. She had her nose stuck in her well-annotated, highlighted leaves, memorising for the hundredth time the cues she already knew by heart. And, feeling the backpack being pulled beside her fine ankles, she lifted her head and smiled to Daryl. In public, they were acquaintances, friends almost, but they didn't exchange any romantic gesture. Lily didn't ask, Daryl didn't offer. And the both of them respecting an implicit pact they unconsciously signed up without breathing a word, they kept secret the true nature of their relationship. Because, in private, they were more than acquaintances, they were something else than friends. And their kisses were more and more ardent and passionate; their hands more adventurous; their moans more fervent. The exploration of their bodies always went farther, towards the seeking of a pleasure always more intense. Until the day, at last, she submitted herself to him. For an instant, by a pleasant Sunday afternoon, while Lily's parents were away, in the young woman's bedroom, on her white linen, the sylvan atmosphere of the art work in Daryl's back. And in his own bedroom too, the copy gifted by Mister Albin concealed under his pillow; their two teenagers bedrooms twinned, joined by that secret passage, these two hidden doors that echoed back to one another. And each one of them at night lost oneself in the admiration of that nymph, of that stag; and they were reunited by imagination, only parting ways at first light, when the dawn birdsong, as always, tore apart the lovers.

From that afternoon, Daryl only keeps some unclear recollections. Vanished the words they exchanged, forgotten the every touches, the caresses, the kisses. Only remain, incredibly memorable, the sensations and the emotions; the shaft of light filtering through the window's heavy curtains and splashing Lily's face, who became sumptuous and extraordinary for the occasion, of a solar beauty; the blood staining the light room; and that feeling stronger than anything - magnificent and frightful at the same time - that Daryl didn't understand, didn't want to understand or analyse. A feeling that he's identifying, only now, lying on the muddy grass, as being love. He remembers asking her only once if she loved him. And she just smiled a little enigmatically, slightly tilting her head, as if she was very seriously thinking about an unexpected question, which was totally taking her by surprise. Then, she declared the question didn't really have a sense, because answering it with words would be senseless too. To love wasn't to talk; to love was to act. _To love, is to act_. She would confess later, unmasking herself of her own initiative, that the sentence wasn't hers. It was a quote she read some day, she didn't know where exactly any more, and she liked.

Thinking back now, Daryl realises - with the force of such evidence that strangely you ignore it for a long time - that that year was the best year of his life, the more normal too. Within the space of one year, he was a teenager and a student like any other. His father was gone in Alabama, with a very young dancer - she must have been barely older than Daryl himself - who was paid to strip out of her clothes in a sordid bar, and whom Daryl came across once, exiting his father's bedroom - a little before their departure - naked, dead-eyed, her arm dotted with needle marks. And it was mostly Merle who took care of him that year, putting food on the table by hunting, some, and by short-sighted ploys, mainly. They had been happy just the two of them; watching until late sports program on television or moronic shows, whom sometimes made them laugh to tears; drinking beers and stuffing themselves with potato chips; gently squabbling, teasing each other. But that state of grace didn't last. Their father came home, with his spite for only company. And Merle had been caught, drugs possession Daryl thinks he remembers. And Mister Albin, whose expression had revealed an undesirable worry, got a glimpse of a bluish shadow on Daryl's skin. And Lily, despite Daryl's strategies of dissimulation, saw a blow. That was then she pronounced that fateful sentence which would dash everything.

She wanted to help him, to get him out of that. Daryl then flew into a towering rage, a violent fury the fear and the panic he read on Lily's face only aroused. And who did she think she was, huh? some kind of fairy Godmother who rushes to the weak and helpless' rescue, a pathetic girl who desperately seeks for a charity work. But Daryl didn't need her good deeds, didn't need help. He wasn't some poor, feeble, vulnerable, little thing. After having shouted his anger for a long time, for hours did it seem to him, after having copiously and harshly insulted her, Daryl left slamming the door shut, leaving her alone, crying, drowned with tears, shipwrecked in that white ocean that was her bedroom. The following day, at school, he got his revenge from her. He gathered all his courage and he told to one of his pal some intimate details of his relationship with Lily; amplifying a bit here; omitting a bit there. She was very naïve and Daryl had played her well, did they conclude together, laughing. It only took a few days for the rumour to spread over. And Lily, who, a fortnight ago, was at her zenith, who lived her moment of glory incarnating an august and dazzling Iphigenia, holed up in the hallway recesses, like a scared, hunted animal. But Daryl didn't understand yet who was the predator and who was the prey. The young woman kept the lowest profile she could, trying to disappear. It was for the best, because Daryl didn't want to see her at all, he couldn't, he didn't have the required strength. It was for the best really. They met by chance, on a misunderstanding, which made - for a mysterious cause - a sibylline and unfathomable Mister Albin offer him the job of the stage director's assistant, and which pushed Daryl - for even more mysterious reasons - to agree. For that matter, he won't ever speak to Lily again. In September, he won't take the school's path back. He won't see her again. He won't see Mister Albin again.

* * *

(*) « _On waters still and black where the stars are sleeping,  
White Ophelia is floating like a great lily  
Floating most slowly in her long veils laying…  
– In distant woods one hears the call of the hallali_. »

Arthur Rimbaud, _Ophelia_.  
Translated by _James Harriman-Smith_


	3. Norma

If you go out in the woods today

3. Norma

_"Odi... purgar quest'aura  
contaminata dalla mia presenza  
ho risoluto, né trar meco io posso  
questi infelici... a te li affido."_

Felice Romani (libretto for Vincenzo Bellini), _Norma_.(*)

* * *

When his eyelids flutter about slightly, Daryl realises with horror he's crying. The pain came back, tormenting, throbbing, stronger than ever, while the revelation keeps its assault coming, striking him at heart with its clarity, its limpidity, its transparency. He was in love with Lily; maybe he even does love her still. Remorse and regret are too heavy a burden; he doesn't need that now. He needs to focus on the present moment, on the precarious situation he is in, to assess the damages, to examine the solutions. He looks to the right at the walker's inert carcass, whom had been pushed beside him, the knife still poked in its eye; to his left, the same pair of grimy boots; and above him, leaned on him, Rick's anxious, terrified, petrified face. Rick, whose forehead is already solemn. Daryl struggles to raise himself up on his elbows to gauge the extent of his thigh wound. And it's only then that he notices with dread it is indeed a bite, very noticeable and visible under his torn, worn-out, threadbare pants - covered with mud, blood, dirt accumulated during days of roving, of fights, of flight. He won't even wear some decent pants. Even his father had some, that black, cheap suit to make him fit to be seen in the low-quality, open coffin in which he was resting. A funeral that cost all Daryl's savings. Merle hadn't been there; and it was alone that he went to the local bar, once the ridiculous, conventional ceremony - full of clichés and lies - over, once the few grieving, attending persons' hands shaken, and their hypocritical trivialities listened to. And hours later, he came out of that bar, stumbling and vomiting, under the escort of the owner, who was scolding him for having started an umpteenth quarrel, and who was threatening him, as usual, to call the police if it was to happen again, what he would never do, they both knew it.

That night, in the alcohol steam, his lungs tarred with tobacco; his sleep had been filled by strange and troubling dreams. Through a dense and dark forest, strewn with big, menacing ebony trees, he ran, chased by his father's dislocated corpse. He had to hide in the bushes, to climb in the trees, to melt himself into the wild nature to avoid being caught. His father had become a giant and him, a Lilliputian. And he ran and ran when his mother suddenly appeared by his sides, showing him the safest path, the best hiding place. That mother he killed though on his birth day, about whom he knew nothing, about whom Merle never talked, whom his father mentioned only as an excuse, among so many more, to beat him up. That mother, however his victim, came to offer him shelter and protection, to be his shield, his armour, his cuirass; reiterating that absolute sheer gift of herself that gave Daryl his life twenty-five years ago. It was the next day, while he was laboriously recuperating from an awful hang-over, he had the idea of that tattoo on his chest, that he envisioned as a talisman, a protective juju, a permanent charm, pacifying him forever.

When he arrived at the minuscule tattoo salon, next to the big ironmongery, in which he had made a lot of purchases for the different renovation works he was employed at; a woman about thirty years old, with raven hair, graced with artificial violet highlights, sooty eyelids, and a slightly gothic garb, welcomed him. And after nodding at Daryl's request, she suggested that he chose a letter type in the thick catalogue she was handing to him. With a lopsided smile, she first asked him if Norma was his girlfriend. And since Daryl had just grunted a few inaudible and incomprehensible words, shaking his head, she exclaimed, under her customer perplex and circumspect look, that she never ever would have taken him for an opera enthusiast. Then she shrugged, seeing his questioning air. When he left the salon, at nightfall, while large shadows were stretching down the car park where he pulled his old pick-up truck, the name of his mother, immortal while dead, protected his heart, anchored there forever, the last impassable rampart between the world and himself, between his feelings and all the destructive and malevolent forces wanting to make him suffer. Every time he let his hands palm touch his heart, it seemed to him he was chanting an incantation, he was intoning a prayer.

Exhausted, vanquished by the great effort he just made, Daryl lets his torso drop back on the ground. And he raises a trembling, bloodied hand he puts on his shirt, on his chest. The thin and viscid fabric is the only barrier between his fingers and his magical tattoo, Norma. It took several weeks for Daryl to think back to the tattoo artist's comment about the opera; a few weeks more to be annoyed by his own ignorance feeling; and a couple additional weeks to finally take the decision to use the only public computer he knew about, in that big café, in front of which he often drove. The one with the wan lights that clashed with the black leatherette of the benches and dark tilling. He sat down on a sticky seat and a small, African-American, chubby lady offered him some coffee. No sugar, no cream, had specified Daryl, making his order, letting for a moment his eyes wander on the television screen broadcasting images of a basketball game with Vinny Del Negro. That way - a cup of coffee in one hand, the sports caster toned down in one ear - he discovered his mother had the name of an eponymous opera's heroine. He even listened to some extracts of that musical piece. But he soon dropped his listening, due to the deep boredom that music, he judged to be soporific, aroused in him. The theme itself however fascinated him. And it was with a lively interest he read the outline first, then the whole libretto telling the story of that high priestess, whom had to choose between her death and the sacrifice of her two illegitimate children, and whom ended up by opting for the stake to save her children. A story with an ironic echo that very deeply moved Daryl. Contemplative, lost in his meditation, he took his car to go back home on the long, tortuous, winding, poorly lit up road.

That discovery, he was going to think a lot about, acted as a catalyst; progressively, furtively relieved him of that huge, unbearable guilt he carried around during his whole life. That heroine was going to slowly merge with his mother the way he pictured her. Daryl's Norma was going to gradually receive the attributes of Bellini's Norma - her bravery, her determination, her purity sullied by a concupiscent man - until it formed, in his mind, a strong and powerful image of a perfect woman; none could ever matched up with any more. Like that, without Daryl being really aware of it, a little bit unwittingly, her mother gave up her victim status, murdered by her new-born baby, to become an admirable woman, mistress of her destiny until the very last minute. Daryl even ended up attributing her some ancient, druidical knowledge; like the high priestess had had, performing long occult, cabalistic rituals at the light of a full, feminine and mystical moon. And just like that, her mother became the formidable botanist he wouldn't ever be. And the powers of her name, now performative, inked in Daryl's skin, greatly increased, at an exponential rate; turning him into a henceforth impregnable citadel, whom would be too though - and had always been perhaps, in a way, he gets it now - his Achilles' heel. That stronghold repelling its assailants also became a prison from which he couldn't break free any longer.

Daryl watches Rick as he slowly stands up, while they share a long, knowing look; expressing all their mutual understanding, their reciprocal respect, the depths of such a new-found relationship that the exceptional circumstances made grow so fast though. A brutal fit of pain makes Daryl turn his head, a little bit too briskly. And he lets out a muffled cry, slightly throaty. But he gets a grip on himself. It isn't the time to waver, it won't be long now anyway, only a few minutes left, a few seconds more likely. On those inner cheers up, gathering what pugnacity he still has; Daryl lifts his head. He vainly narrows his eyes to try to make out the face of whomever is giving his crossbow - which must have become stranded a little bit earlier a few feet from him - to the sheriff. Rick then leans toward him for the second time and he slips gently, respectfully the crossbow between Daryl's hand and chest; final honour, ultimate homage granted to the great warrior he had been those last months, solemn gesture putting a little smile on his face, of gratitude, and of pride. The former police officer's body spreads up again. He seems huge to Daryl's eyes, which follow Rick's right hand drawing, like in slow motion, his gun. That gigantic man, arm outstretched, aims the revolver at Daryl's forehead, and seems petrified in that pose, stock-still, unable to see his action through the end, to accomplish it. Then, a cloud clears away, blown by the gentle, springs breeze. And the whole scene is lit by the moonlight, creating a halo around Rick's head, who is waiting for Daryl to make a sign, to give his consent, one way or another, his blessing, his absolution for the act he is about to commit. But Rick is soon fading away, his face softens, assumes more feminine features. And in that clearing, like an open-air temple – the thick trunks standing for the slender and sculpted columns; the foliage, some moving mosaic – and under a beautiful, circular moon, standing in front of Daryl, Norma is there. Her empty, right hand is stretched toward him, her palm up to the sky, as an invitation, that Daryl, with a peaceful and tranquil nod, accepts.

The End.

* * *

(*) "_Listen; the breath of nature withdraws its pulses_  
_From my tainting presence; the pile awaits me;_  
_To the tomb I bear not these wretched orphans,_  
_Be thou their guardian!_"

English translation by Oliver Ditson Company's Standard Edition of Opera Librettos.

* * *

Author's note:

Once again, many, many thanks to those who helped me, especially QueensGambit and Praxid.

Thank you so, so much for reading this story until the very end.

And all my thanks to the readers who showed their appreciation of the story by leaving a review, or by adding it in their favorites or their alerts. It always makes me so happy! :)


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